


Culmination

by unwindmyself



Series: curious shapes shift in the dark [57]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle Scenes, Being High, Cliffhangers, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Team as Family, Unrepentantly Evil Billith, Vampire Family, agency and choices!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:20:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Nora rides off her high and Willa babysits, Jessica and Sookie and Eric have a final showdown with Billith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Culmination

**Author's Note:**

> Part five, "Nothing Ordinary."

“What was it like?”

Willa looks away from the door, glances at her aunt. Nora is laid out atop a table, silver chain across her throat and a pair of silver handcuffs pinning her wrists to the nearest possible anchor, stretched out above her head. Her ankles are free, as much out of a lack of any other means to hold them as out of a show of symbolic good faith, and right now they’re crossed in an alarmingly dainty way.

“What was what like, Aunt Nora?” Willa asks, although she thinks she knows.

“The girl,” Nora sighs all languorously. “When you tasted her.” She makes a disgruntled sort of face. “Nobody will let me try it. It’s not fair, everyone else has gotten to.”

“Eric…”

“Eric has had Sookie,” Nora points out. “Eric _drained_ Sookie’s fairy godmother.”

Willa makes a note to ask more about that later, but right now, she knows, is not the time. “Well, you can’t, okay?” she says. “Not right now, while… not right now.”

Nora whines. “Not fair,” she repeats.

“Most of this ain’t,” Willa agrees. “I think that’s sorta the point. Why we’re stopping it.”

 

* * *

 

The once-shrine has changed in the last couple of weeks, not much but enough.  It’s odd to be noting things like “the glass case that once held sacramental demonic drug blood has been removed” or “there are bloodless corpses piled in the corner” like they’re decorating choices, but Eric can’t entirely help himself but to.

Any detail may prove to be significant, that’s what his sister would say.  That’s what he’s trying to keep in mind.

He dispatches one of the vampires standing guard and Jessica the other before they and Sookie step forward into the chamber entirely; there are other little minions flanking Bill, two on each side, who tense up when they see the intruders, but Bill waves a hand and they all stand down.

“Ew,” Sookie mutters, looking around the room in horror.

It’s unclear what she’s referring to: the minions, all of them looking like they’re from a Hot Topic advertisement, the pile of bodies, which are rather distinctly not fresh, or Bill himself, perched atop the stone pedestal where Lilith’s blood was kept in its case and staring at everyone with a raised-eyebrows sort of expression that could really only be deemed pretentious.

“I agree,” Eric tells Sookie.

“So good of you to join us,” Bill declares, flashing a chilling smile.

 

* * *

 

“It’s my fault,” Nora mumbles suddenly. “All of this is my fault.”

“Don’t say that,” Willa exclaims, though she also battles her instinct to jump up and offer more direct comfort. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” Nora insists. “And now I’m paying for it. Like a proper Greek tragedy. _Hubris_.”

Willa winces. “Well, we’re fixing it, okay?”

“I hope they’re getting him good,” Nora declares, rolling on her side as much as the cuffs allow. “I wish I could do it. I want to see the fear in his eyes as he falls apart from the inside.” A long pause, after which she smiles distantly. “And maybe his blood…”

“You don’t need any more of his blood,” Willa says. “You don’t even really want it.”

“Sometimes I do,” Nora confides. “I know it’s wrong, I know this… this isn’t how I should… but I miss feeling magical. I always felt magical on the blood.”

“Do you feel magical right now?” Willa asks.

Nora considers this, really seeming to retreat into herself for a moment, then shakes her head, pouting.

“See, it’s not the right kinda magic,” Willa points out.

“But it was then,” Nora says softly. “He was right, I was seduced by it. By _her_.”

“You stepped away from it, though,” Willa murmurs.

“And wound up silvered to a table,” Nora snaps, punctuating it with another of those hollow, manic laughs.

 

* * *

 

“You always have been a presumptuous dick,” Eric observes, folding his arms.

“And you, Eric Northman, have always been too arrogant for your own good,” Bill retorts, though he’s still smiling.  “You’re a braggart and a hedonist –”

“Takes one to know one,” Jessica whispers to Sookie.

“And you’ve never cared what happens to anyone else but yourself,” Bill continues.  He notices Eric setting his jaw (Eric has never been exactly good at downplaying his reactions) and adds, “Even your concern for others is selfishly motivated.”

“And how, _pray tell_ , is that any different than you?” Eric spits out, rolling his eyes.  “Sophie-Anne was a bitch, but after you killed her _for Sookie's sake_ did you just trip and fall onto her throne?  A throne that apparently still wasn’t enough for you?”

Bill shrugs.  “Louisiana needed me,” he says.  “Sophie-Anne was a vain, immoral psychopath –”

“Takes one to know one,” Sookie whispers to Jessica.

“And the world needs me now,” he declares.  “It is high time that it was brought to its true natural state.  No more false prophets –”

Eric laughs, he actually laughs out loud.

But Bill ignores it.  “No more attempts at unnatural coexistence or tolerance of those who are less than us, just the natural order of things,” he concludes.

 

* * *

 

“It all seems a bit futile, really. Will you please tell me?”

“Tell you…”

“Your girl,” Nora whispers. “Bra-a-aelyn.” She draws the name out in a wistful sigh.

Willa falters. “Is it gonna make you try to…”

“Cross my heart it won’t,” Nora singsongs, letting one of her legs drop and begin to swing off the side of the table. “Silver me if I start to. Promise.”

“Well,” Willa says, “it was sorta like takin’ a shot of peach schnapps. Except…”

“I’ve never had peach schnapps,” Nora interrupts. “They didn’t have those fancy fruit-dessert liqueurs in my time, or if they did I sure as fuck never found them.”

“Okay, so just peaches,” Willa amends. “Peaches with honey, but… carbonated, kinda? And alcoholic.”

“I remember honey,” Nora muses. “Putting my finger in the pot and coming away with it all sticky-sweet, all…” She trails off, lets her gaze drift toward the ceiling. “I took opium once, you know.”

“Oh,” Willa says, a bit confused as to what to do with that information. “Well, I guess it might be like that?”

“The boy I took it with saw magical horses fuck,” Nora adds. “Goddamn _horses_.”

 

* * *

 

“A natural order over which you, a whiny plantation owner with a stick so far up his ass it’s a wonder it hasn’t staked him and not even two centuries of life experience, should reign supreme,” Eric muses.  “That makes perfect sense.”

One of the minions, a teenage boy with more than his fair share of eyeliner, jumps forward to attack Eric on impulse, but Eric takes him by the throat before he can even blink and slams him to the ground.

“You’re the most foolish one here if you think you can take me,” he mutters in the kid’s ear, reaching his free hand behind him without looking.  “Well, the second most foolish.” Jessica gives him a stake and he dispatches the boy all in the span of ten seconds, so fluid it’s like it had been rehearsed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bill says. “You kill one of them, three more will appear to take its place. Which is more than I can say for your little gang of rebels.”

“You’re pathetic,” Jessica mutters. “Havin’ to fuck everyone else over so you feel better.”

“You are my _daughter_ , Jessica,” Bill declares, frowning disapprovingly. “You are of my blood.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Jessica retorts, and it sounds like she’s being petulant, sure, but she has every right. “If that had really fuckin’ mattered I would have been here when you went all evil and maybe I coulda talked you down from it, but you pretty much abandoned me and now you’re just tryin’ to use it to recruit me to whatever fuckin’ religious bullshit you’re allegedly masterminding.”

Bill sighs. “If you had really taken the book to heart, really _read_ it –”

“I’ve read the damn thing cover to cover,” Jessica hisses. “It’s millenniums-old _bullshit_ that you’re just usin’ to justify actin’ like a greedy douchebag.”

“Fightin’ words,” one of the remaining minions pipes up, smirking.

It’s Jessica’s turn to snort out a laugh, then, and before anyone can say or do anything about it she lifts her gun and fires at one of the other lackeys (this one a waifish little pink-haired girl). “I’m not seeing those replacements you mentioned,” she quips.

One of the remaining minions shuts his eyes – another baby vamp appears in the doorway, promptly lunges for Sookie and is met with a blast of light – but the other just frowns up at Bill. “They already killed mine,” she mumbles, a red tear falling down her cheek.

“We’ve already killed most of your sad little newborn army,” Eric points out. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there were maybe ten of them left including the four who came in with you, and I’m sure the others have taken care of those who are still left outside.”

 

* * *

 

“Okay, maybe not that much like that,” Willa amends hastily, wrinkling her nose. “It was nice, it was really nice, but I wanna be careful with her. With _it_.”

Nora’s eyes go wide, but for a good fifteen seconds all she does is giggle, almost eerily.

“What?” Willa asks, suspicious.

“Like father, like daughter,” Nora hums.

“What do you mean by that?” Willa exclaims.

Nora raises an eyebrow. “You’ve got feelings for your fairy,” she whispers, sounding almost devious.

“So what if I do?” Willa retorts, her voice pitching high.

“It’s cute,” Nora exclaims. “Does she like you, too?”

 

* * *

 

Bill sighs. “You just don’t understand, do you,” he murmurs. “I don’t want to fight you. Jessica is my first child. You, Eric Northman, even with all of your braggadocio you are one of the oldest and therefore most powerful vampires in the country. And your sister, if you allow her to come back to me, is one of the most faithful servants that I have ever had.”  _Me_ and _I_ meaning Lilith.

“And where does that leave me?” Sookie cuts in, looking altogether unamused. “Where does that leave the rest of us?”

“Your family, Eric, can be brought to the cause,” Bill says. “I would never make to split you apart. Why, that would make me a hypocrite.”

“ _That_ would?” Jessica exclaims.

“But you and your little band of fairy halflings, I’m afraid, are abominations,” Bill continues. “As I told you before and as I will tell you again. There is no place for you in this world, and you will be dealt with.”

Sookie grits her teeth and sends a ball of light blasting at him so hard he falls backward off of his pedestal-throne; this causes the remaining minions to speed forward, but Eric manages to both shield Sookie from them and shoot them both in the heart.

Jessica, meanwhile, has dashed to Bill’s side.

“I knew you would realize,” Bill says, smirking.

“Realize what,” Jessica murmurs, leaning over him and pinning him to the ground. “That you’re a sadistic fuck and while you may have _given me new life_ or however you wanna describe it you are so far from my family? That all you do is hurt my family and I don’t generally let that shit slide?”

Bill looks puzzled. “Jessica…”

“No,” she says. “No more of your bullshit monologues. No more of your bullshit, period. I think it’s time to test out that theory.”

Before he can say another word or think to struggle, Jessica reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a silver-tipped stake, shrieking as she plunges it into his heart (so hard the wood splinters).

Sookie cringes, but it’s more from being taken aback by the noise and the way that his blood splatters across the room; Eric lets out a satisfied sort of hum. They’re both staring at a bloody-faced, wild-eyed Jessica kneeling in her Maker’s remains.

And five minutes must pass like that, just staring at the space where an evil vampire godthing used to be, before Tara appears in the doorway. “We heard a scream,” she says, letting the rest go unspoken.

“It’s done,” Sookie and Jessica say in unison.

 

* * *

 

“I haven’t exactly had a chance to bring it up to her,” Willa mumbles. “I mean, we’ve kinda been doin’ other world-saving kinda shit.”

“Sometimes that’s the best time to bring it up,” Nora declares. “You never know, after all.”

“If she’d been hurt too bad I’d feel her,” Willa says, sounding suddenly panicky. “Right?”

“Right,” Nora nods. “That was the whole reason for it. Why you –”

She’s interrupted by the door slamming open and Eric speeding inside, first to lay a comforting hand on his daughter’s shoulder as he says, “It’s done.”

“Can I…” Willa begins, eyeing the doorway (she can see everyone else beginning to stream into the lobby, and Nora’s right, you never know).

Eric nods. “Go to her,” he says. He’s already moving to take the silver away from Nora’s skin (she’s calmed considerably, and the fairy girls have all de-bloodied themselves; he leaves the handcuffs still hanging off of one wrist just in case).

“It’s done,” he repeats, low in her ear. “The girl managed it.” He wraps his arms around her, she wraps her arms around him, and for a moment they’re just there holding each other oblivious to everyone else murmuring restlessly behind them.

And then the girl in question is suddenly in the room with them, her sheepish expression at odds with the blood splattered over her face.

“Hey,” she says to the older vampires.

And Nora looks up, her eyes slightly unfocused but her expression curious. “Hey,” she echoes. “We owe a great deal to you, I think.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Jessica demurs, stepping closer in a way that Eric doesn’t understand but realizes means he ought to take a step back himself. “But I’m glad I did it.” She moves into Nora’s space, wraps an arm around her waist, and everything else becomes just ambient noise as she leans in to plant a long, hungry kiss on Nora’s lips (Nora, for her part, squeaks and then relaxes into it, moaning happily).

Eric gapes.  Sookie gapes.  Pam and Tara and Willa gape.  Braelyn and Charlaine and Danika gape. Sam and Luna gape.

“I knew it,” Adilyn declares.

**Author's Note:**

> And with that, the revised season six is done. Will there be a revised season seven? You can bet on it.


End file.
